New Zealand Exchange Cryptopia Suffers a “Security Breach”

New Zealand based crypto exchange ‘Cryptopia’ has suspended its trading services and is now under maintenance mode. According to a tweet, posted on Jan. 15, the exchange announced that is switching offline, as it experienced “security breach which resulted in significant losses,” on January 14.

In a series of tweets posted on Jan.14th, the platform informed its users about the unscheduled maintenance, with several users forcing them to use an aggressive approach and locate the lost funds.

As of now, there is no information on the number of losses, the cryptocurrencies, and tokens that were affected in the attack or any steps taken to refund users.

With their official announcement of the breach, the platform has notified government agencies, including New Zealand Police and High Tech Crimes Unit, who will be investigating the issue, considering this as a major crime.

Talking about the attack, famous Twitter personality Whale Panda commented on the issue saying:

“Interesting that this happens in a bear season where small exchanges are struggling to make ends meet and are aggressively messaging anyone involved with crypto projects to get them to pay listing fees to get listed on their platforms.”

Whale Panda’s comment was backed by responses, with one such coming from crypto investigator Whale Alert, stating that 19,391 ETH tokens worth over USD 2.44 million were moved from the exchange platform to unknown wallets on Jan.13. Although, it is still not clear who moved the funds; hacker or the exchange.

Several other users commented on the allegation saying the loss of funds, could well be an exit scam, and a pre-planned one.

In May 2017, Cryptopia had launched its own cryptocurrency ‘NZed,’ connected to the New Zealand Dollar. The currency would later help the users buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, then transfer it to NZ Dollars, if wishing to opt out. The cryptocurrency was then shelved owing to banking regulations.

Meanwhile, Cryptopia’s Sri Lankan headquarters in Colombo was under confinement by the police, after a “significant amount” of cryptocurrencies was moved without any authorization.

Many crypto exchanges were hacked in 2018; the attacks resulted in the loss of $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

On January 5, Coinbase blocked Etherium Classic (ETC) payments after the platform identified that its blockchain is suffering from 51% attack. Three days later, Gate.io announced that it had lost 40,000 ETC ($220,000) in the attack.

What are your thoughts on the hacking of Cryptopia and the significant loss it has incurred? Let us know in the comments section below.